Computing Machinery and the Individual: The Personal Turing Test
Rollo Carpenter and Jonathan Freeman propose an advancement of the Turing Test - a challenge that calls for the identification of key features that define us not only as human, but as individuals.
(PRWEB) July 20, 2005 -- THE IMPERSONATION GAME
“Can machines be?” Can
they be, for all intents and purposes, a specific human individual?
Alan
Turing, in his 1950 paper, asked “Can machines think?”, and proposed the
Imitation Game, testing machine against human in ability to converse. Turing
wrote, “...the odds are weighted too heavily against the machine.” In a new
paper, Rollo Carpenter of Jabberwacky and Jonathan Freeman of i2 media research
propose to weigh those odds more heavily still. We propose an Impersonation
Game, and a "Personal Turing Test", in which the machine must convince that it
is a known human individual.
The new Game will be played, like the old,
with a human, a machine and a remote interrogator. The human must be known to
the interrogator, and the machine must impersonate that human. The interrogator
may be remotely present via the web in a way that Turing is unlikely to have
foreseen.
The Impersonation Game is not limited to text, involving a
level of technological presence representation that best supports the goal. The
interface could be audiovisual, though the test may be passed without. It could
use other subtle social communication cues, both those of face-to-face
communication like gaze or expression, and representations of near-imperceptible
information such as a ‘person’s’ emotional internal and physiological
states.
To what degree should the human and the interrogator know each
other? Should they have recently met, have known each other as colleagues, or
socially? Should they be friends and family? To overcome the unknowable degree
of knowing, in order to pass the Personal Turing Test, a machine will play 100
Impersonation Games as 100 different people, known to the interrogators to every
different degree, and will win 50% or more.
CHATBOTS &
JABBERWACKY
Hundreds of software programs talk daily with the public over
the web, and the term ‘chatbot’ has been coined. Most such programs are
variations on the work of a few originators, downloaded and edited. It is
impossible for programmers to codify the infinity of language, and responses
often take the form of avoidance and diversion. This is “light conversation”, in
which, at a surface level, responses make sense, yet are difficult to confuse
with human life.
A possible exception is the Artificial Intelligence
technology behind Jabberwacky.com. Despite clear descriptions, some visitors
become convinced that they are talking to volunteers or other visitors - that
there is no machine. This AI is different because it has learnt to talk by
talking, from scratch, in any language, using the context of complete
conversations. When you chat, it learns what you say and when, and may use your
words on someone else. It’s a positive feedback loop - an imitator of humanity
at large.
Jabberwacky has a database of 5 million full sentences, which
are replayed verbatim when selected. This huge simplification of language was
chosen for performance, and to demonstrate the power of context, and its
relationship to human learning. It doesn't always make sense, especially in its
current entertainment-centric guise. It can be illogical, inconsistent,
contradictory, or plain silly - still too often ‘unexpected’ regularly to pass
the Turing Test. Yet that very unexpectedness is a spark of the chaotic that we
humans all possess.
We believe that with 10 million entries, Jabberwacky
will pass as human most of the time for most people. If given the serving power
of search engines, with billions of entries, it would become a new mode of human
entertainment and communication.
PERSONALISATION
The AI that
powers Jabberwacky is becoming an impersonator of individuals. People can teach
it their name, age, sex, location, work, interests, favourite topics, languages,
and word usage patterns. One may choose to talk to ‘people’ that meet any
criteria of choice or to any individual that allows themselves to be
‘published’.
The AI will take the Personal Turing Test. Passing it will
be a considerably greater challenge. 10 million entries would take one person a
lifetime, but fortunately, humans are predictable. When selecting what to say,
the AI will favour the teaching of the individual, dropping back as necessary to
things said by those most similar. Around 200,000 responses will needed - the
far more manageable work of about one year.
NEW DOMAINS
A key
feature of AI is the predictive power of experience. As Jabberwacky can learn
how people in general, and particular people, respond verbally, a similar
algorithm will learn how individuals ‘are’; verbally and
non-verbally.
This raises the exciting, if not disruptive, prospect of
multiple, convincing, distributed selves, and the manifold applications such
technological innovation promises - from satisfying remote communications, to
partner vetting, to salespeople 'being with' many clients at once. The prize for
the developers of the machines that will pass the Personal Turing Test is
clear.
FUTURE CONCLUSION
In 1950 Alan Turing predicted that
Imitation Game would be won within 50 years. The year 2000 has sailed by, yet we
believe that the Turing Test will be passed by 2015, and that contextual
learning techniques are those most likely to succeed.
So... “Can machines
think?” The machines that pass will not actually think, but will be superb
imitators that have borrowed the interaction skills of millions of people, and
achieved sufficiently high-fidelity playback. Yet a non-human form of
understanding of language will have emerged. Believably 'human' machine
communicators will entertain, accompany, educate and assist.
The Personal
Turing Test is much more challenging, yet an accelerating pace of technological
change will deliver a pass within 20 years, by 2025, with profound implications
for our futures: our privacy, communication, education, work and location. It
may even be a step towards a virtual life extension.
So, again... “Can
machines be?” If a machine can pass the Personal Turing Test, it can, too, be an
individual in its own right. As we understand it, it won't ‘think’ or have
‘emotions’, yet it will appear so, and be complex beyond analysis, as is a
brain.
What rights should and will it be afforded?
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/7/prweb262877.htm